The catch? Buyers have to draw up renovation plans within a year and execute them within three.

As Macnaughtan soon learned, that clause came at a cost.

"The conditions were [such] that I would need to pay fees and permits" totalling $22,000 AUD ($17,040 US) before she started to renovate, she said.

The bottom dropping out on Macnaughtan's visions of cheap homeownership isn't unheard of.

In America, foreclosed homes that go up for auction almost always need major repairs.

The fact they cost next to nothing usually just serves to get potential buyers interested. When local governments reclaim the properties, they sell them on the agreement that repairs will be made within a certain period of time.

In the end, Macnaughtan realized it was cheaper to buy a house that wasn't on the list of €1 homes, so she spoke to a local real estate agent to see some houses that were more up to par. But when she showed interest in one of those houses, she says, she was told she couldn't buy it on the spot.

"I said I would buy it, but they said not now!" she recalls.

Eight weeks after she had returned home to Australia, without a Sicilian home to her name, she got an email asking if she was still interested.